Goat Simulator
So, this was always supposed to be a simple game. A sandbox where you're a goat doing ridiculous things like flying jet packs, going to space, sacrificing humans to the devil and more. There isn't really a game here beyond wondering around and finding silly things to do. It's full of bugs but the creators don't want to change it as they find it part of the fun.
The whole thing is ridiculous and it's a case of wondering aimlessly around until you find something silly to do or another bizare easter egg. I wouldn't pay for it, but as it's free why not go and look around. You could however just see clips of the silliest things on Youtube, I ended up having to do that to try and get some of the achievements.
The Crew
Okay, this is the one I really care about. You may have heard of this one yourself, it was marketed enough to burn your eyeballs out at the time of release, but the mediocre reviews and online bias put me off, but now it's free! The real hook in this one is the condensed map of America. It's an open world racer and you can drive from one end of America to the other, sort of. Okay, so they've fit it all in to 70-80 miles, which still takes a hell of a long time to drive across in a videogame (don't worry, there's fast travel (after you've already been there before..)) but has all the landmarks and areas of country. There are the main cities that make up the basis of the game, New York, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Las Vegas and LA, but there are smaller representations of many of the other cities of America, like New Orleans, Dallas, Bosston Seattle and others (as an English person I don't really know which are more important than others off this secondary list). You can travel up the Rockies, through the everglades and the sort of deserty bits where nothing really is (like around Vegas) It does make for an interesting setting for a game.
The gameplay is pretty good as well. As the game advances from city to city you get new types of car, from street racing, to off roading, performance cars and more (that's as far as I've got so far), all of which handle differently. That said, they all drift too much. Apart from just the drifting, something else that impacts on the generally good control of the game is the traffic. It seems to just pop in when you're in the middle of a street race and wipes you out. Thankfully you can make up for it with the ridiculous levels of rubber-banding in the game, though of course if you're ahead that's some bullshit right there.
I'm not sure why the game got such bad scores really, on top of the good things I've explained before there are challenges around the map that give you parts to improve your car, landmarks to see, hidden car parts to build classic cars and a nice array of customisable cars to buy and mod (but more importantly give the most ridiculous paint job to). On the other hand, there's multiplayer all up in your face. The game desperately wants you to play in a team of 4 the whole way though, but I can't, this isn't 2008 anymore when me and my friends had all the time in the world, life moves on and I'm the only one left strongly clutching on to the gaming stick (not a metaphore for a penis). Nearly all the achievements in the game (unfortunately I do care about them, yes) are tied around you doing things in groups. If you are to play it alone like I am, you'll find it's got a story that couldn't be any less engrossing. someone killed your brother and framed you for it, and your out for revenge. Sure, sounds interesting but it's presented terribly, so I've skipped it since the first hour. While I'm on a similar subject (not really, but whatever) why has no car based open world game had a good soundtrack since GTA San Andreas. All I needed in that game (and Vice city for that matter) was the in game radio, I can't remember the last time I thought that about a game. Has anyone else seen the Watchdogs 2 trailer? The soundtrack makes me want to kill myself!
On top of this, it seems like there's been a large DLC pack introduced in to this game at some point that isn't included as part of the free deal that games with gold offers. Now, that's fine in theory, but the game doesn't tell you that things aren't actually in the version you have, challenges, garages and more appear on the map as if you have access, only to turn out you need to buy dlc to access it. On top of this, some of the cars you have on offer to buy are ridiculously expensive and unless you want to spend the next year of your life doing challenges, you mwill have to do microtransactions. This wouldn't bother me so much were the game just straight up free, but these were in here when the game was new. In my eyes it's an absolutely piss taking way of trying to get more money out of someone who would have already paid full price for the game, just like Fifa before it (and no doubt many others), it's becoming a situtation where an already full price retail game is trying to dupe unsuspecting parents (and just general morons) out of money. Boo to you Ubisoft (and EA in Fifa's case).
Ignoring my anger about that, as long as you don't spend any money on this you can have a fun time. If you're young enough to have friends available to play games you could probably have a fantastic time. It's a decent racing game, especially for free and I'm glad I've played it, but I'm unlikely to finish it, give it a go though, it's pretty good. (that was convoulted).
Right, come on England, I've still believed since 1998
No comments:
Post a Comment